(This is a paragraph or two longer than usual, please finish it.) I’ve heard several people talk about going out to look for mushrooms over the last month. I have never gone out looking for mushrooms, but I have certainly seen them around. As a matter of fact, I found one a day or two ago growing in our little above ground flower box in front of our house. I should pick it and take it in and fry it up and put it on my burger for lunch. After all, a mushroom is a mushroom, right? Wrong. I do not like mushrooms, and know nothing about them. The one thing I know about mushrooms can be contained in one sentence: some are safe to eat and some are not. And that is everything I know about mushrooms. Without some teaching from people who really know what they are talking about, or some study from reliable sources, it would be very irresponsible, and could be downright dangerous for me to go into the wild and pick them and eat them.

So it is not only important to know about something, but you must also come to grips with what you do not know, or with what you may assume. Nearly all of us have this commonsense when it comes to mushrooms. Yet we deal with belief in God and salvation so nonchalantly. Where in the world do we get the idea that good people go to heaven? It is a lie from the devil to keep you from believing you need forgiveness. I address that idea very understandably in a past blog you can read by clicking at the bottom of today’s post. If you believe you will go to heaven because you are good, please click and read it.

Ephesians 4:14 says that when we mature in faith and knowledge, “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed about by the waves and carried around by every wind of teaching and by the clever cunning of men in their deceitful scheming.” It’s interesting this word for scheming is used twice in the NT. The other place is in Ephesians 6:10 when it talks about resisting the “wiles of the devil.” Once the word is used for people who will mislead you and the other the devil who does the same.

The church is being drug under by the wiles of the devil and he is using the deceitful scheming & clever cunning of man (and even leaders in the church) to do it. There is this idea that calling people to repentance is unloving, and that idea is the second greatest plan the devil has ever come up with (second only to when he asked Eve, “Did God really say…”). To say all we have to do is love people and tell them God loves them, and for us to lead them to believe God does not want them to change… well, that is giving people a ticket to hell. God loves people and because He loves them, he desires that they repent and turn from sin. He loves you and desires that you repent and turn from sin. And if you are a Christian and you are too worried about offending someone to mention repentance, you are doing the devil’s bidding. It is no different than letting someone eat a poisonous mushroom.